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Architects: Espacio 18 Arquitectura
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Photographs:Amy Bello, Arturo Lavariega
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Lead Architect: Sonia Morales
"Masea, wheat and corn" is located in the heart of the Historic Center of the City of Oaxaca, it is a project that was born from the need to generate a meaningful product in the midst of the crisis, an idea is a place that reinterprets the bakery and the Oaxacan tortillería through a research process with the generational knowledge of the family.
Masea is a project that honors the process and enhances the people who produce it, this is reflected in the design and distribution of the space. A sensory journey is generated through order, from the access to the place that shows you the raw material, the mills that transform it, the hands that create the bread on the tables and the clay comal, the finished product, and finally the sales area. The materiality comes from the concept itself, the floors are made of red brick typical of Oaxacan architecture, the existing walls were pigmented with earth and ollin from the chef Olga Cabrera's bread ovens creating a black color that contrasts with the natural pine that refers to wheat and corn. The user experiences the sounds of the worked dough and the ovens, the smells of freshly baked bread, chili, or chocolate in the mill, the touch of the clay of the comal, and the visuals that invite you to enter from the street, where the product is the protagonist.
Finally, this project was carried out in a conscious way and with the idea of answering different questions, the importance of origin, production, the meaning of things, the research, and of course creating a business with meaning, being the most important. Masea teaches us that the set of diverse elements with different qualities can form something extraordinary and representative, like the “milpa”.
